THE WAR ROOM

Nightmare season over for Saints

Published: Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 7:43 p.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, December 29, 2012 at 7:43 p.m.

Finally the nightmare of the 2012 season is almost over for the New Orleans Saints.

I believe the Saints will go out with a home win today against the Carolina Panthers and finish 8-8, but more importantly the team has come to an agreement on a long-term contract with coach Sean Payton.

I always felt Payton would return to the team he has built. First of all Saints owner Tom Benson made money a non-issue.

Say what you want about Benson, but he has always paid for talent. In the pre-Sean-Payton days he was overpaying for talent that people around him wanted, but Benson has always paid and paid well for the talent the front office and coaches wanted him to keep.

And right now the most important piece of the puzzle for the Saints to get back to the Super Bowl (other than the play of quarterback Drew Brees) is Payton.

Money is always important in negotiations and the “Who Dat Nation” and folks across the state and Gulf Coast got to see a glimpse of something I deal with regularly.

It’s the money version of checkers being flipped around boards in sports America. In the last six months we have seen the play out of contract talks with the best player in the history of this franchise in Brees, the name dropping and use of the opening at Arkansas to get LSU head football coach Les Miles a new contract with the school and we have seen Payton’s contract situation.

It is why agents get paid what they do. It is the game of leverage and finding a way to get the maximum for their clients, whether it is a player or a coach.

And Donald Yee, Payton’s agent, did this to perfection. He knew when to push and when to lay up.

Payton likes the setup here with Mickey Loomis running the business side of the team and Payton having a tremendous amount of say in personnel decisions.

It’s Payton’s old boss’s line, but Bill Parcells would always say, “If you want me to cook the meal, then let me buy some of the groceries.”

In New Orleans not one item of football food is bought without Payton’s approval, and he has done a masterful job of piecing together one of the league’s best offensive teams.

But Payton, now a year removed from the sidelines, has to know now that the defense on this club needs an infusion of better talent at defensive end, outside linebacker, cornerback and safety.

It is not just a one-player fix, but it will take a good mix of veteran pickups, development of talent already on the team and a real strong draft to put this team back in a position to play on Super Bowl Sunday.

Playing great on offense is a huge part of winning another Super Bowl, but you have to be able to put consistent pressure on the quarterback, match up better down field in coverage and also find a big play presence at outside linebacker.

Right now those elements are not in place and before the window of opportunity closes on Brees and company, Payton and the scouting department need to make the right choices this spring.

The other major factor is having Brees on the team.

There aren’t many around with the skill set of Brees, and Payton fully understands that his road to another Super Bowl will be paved by the passing skills and leadership of his quarterback.

If he were to jump to another club he would have very few quarterbacks in the same zip code as Brees.

In the NFL today you don’t win Super Bowls without great quarterback play and the Saints have that element in place along with a very good rushing attack when utilized to the fullest.

We have all seen just how well the Saints have rushed the football since Joe Vitt returned to the team as interim head coach.

But in the offseason Payton, along with Loomis, must secure the left tackle position in re-signing Jermon Bushrod.

Quality left tackles in the league are hard to come by and while Bushrod is not considered one of the Top 5 left tackles in the business, he certainly is looked at as a player in the 6-12 range.

Protecting the blind side of Brees is paramount and the Saints have to make Bushrod an offer he can’t refuse before another team makes an offer to him in free agency. It only takes one team to make an offer the Saints can’t or won’t match.

Throw in the development of wide receivers Joe Morgan, Nick Toon, and Saalim Hakim, running back Travaris Cadet, tight end Michael Higgins and two draft choices (offensive linemen Andrew Tiller and Marcel Jones) and the Saints have good young offensive players they can develop.

For the Saints, they must use their free-agent money and draft choices on defensive players, and in particular hit big on draft day since there will be a hard money crunch in 2013 when it comes to spending or not spending in free agency.

Finally the nightmare of the 2012 season is over and the good news is there is no way this offseason can be as turbulent as the last one. There will be personnel changes, especially defensively and it is needed, but most importantly the New Year’s wish for everyone has arrived early. The sheriff is back in town, and his name is Sean Payton.

LSU COULD LOSE KEY JUNIORS TO DRAFT

We are living in the golden age of LSU football with the Tigers winning 107 games and losing just 24 over the last 10 years.

In that time the Tigers have lost just two games out of conference — the 2005 Capital One Bowl game against Iowa in Nick Saban’s last game as head coach at LSU and the 2010 Capital One Bowl game against Penn State 19-17 and that game was technically forfeited back to the Tigers by the NCAA.

It has been the case of recruiting and developing big time talent that has been the cornerstone of success at LSU and keeping most of the top talent in the state in Baton Rouge.

In that 10-year span the Tigers have had 56 players drafted into the NFL.

But for the first time in either the Saban or Les Miles time frame at LSU the Tigers will be on the verge of the biggest loss of junior talent ever from the school.

Already cornerback/punt returner Tyrann Mathieu, who was dismissed from the squad in the summer, has already declared he will come out early for the 2013 NFL draft.

Also it has been reported that reserve running back/kickoff return man Michael Ford has also taken a long look at jumping early to the NFL.

Mingo, Montgomery, Logan and Reid are projected first-round choices if they decide to leave early for the 2013 draft and Minter, who is my second rated inside linebacker behind Notre Dame All-American Manti Te’o, is rated as a middle second round choice in 2013.

So there will be plenty of holes to fill on the defensive side of the ball for LSU and for the first time in 10 years it will be a focus along the defensive line that will be looked at closely due to a high number of young players having to see playing time.

LSU is “Defensive Line University” and has had at least one defensive lineman drafted into the league over the past nine drafts. No other school in college football can make that claim.

This recruiting season for LSU has been a jackpot for the type of defensive linemen who will one day play at the next level.

The Tigers have commitments from defensive tackle Greg Gilmore from South View High School in North Carolina, defensive end Frank Herron from Central High School in Tennessee, defensive end/tackle Christian Lacouture from Lincoln Southwest High School in Nebraska, defensive tackle Tevin Lawson from Denham Springs High School, defensive end Lewis Neal from Hunt High School in North Carolina, defensive end Michael Patterson from Winnfield High School, and there is a strong possibility that middle linebacker Melvin Jones, who is from Washington-Marion High School, could project to defensive end. The Tigers also hope to land defensive tackle Maquedius Bain, a 6-foot4, 295-pounder from Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Last year the Tigers hit big at linebacker landing the likes of Kwon Alexander, Ronnie Feist, Trey Granier, Deion Jones, Lamar Louis and Lorenzo Phillips during the recruiting period and that haul is the best young linebacker group in the history of the school.

Now the Tigers have to do the same along the defensive line and this group could well shape up to be the most talented group ever up front.

In the real world of college football the hardest positions to find are along the defensive line, linebacker and at quarterback.

They are the real “skill” positions since there are just so few that can play at a high level.

Throw in the fact that the Tigers have also landed two highly recruited quarterbacks in Anthony Jennings from Georgia and Hayden Rettig from California and the Tigers have the pieces in place to make strong runs at national championships in future years.

Despite what will be lost over the next two weeks in Baton Rouge, LSU football will still be at the highest level of college football because of its ability to recruit and develop talent not only in the state, but they have reached out to grab talent across the country.

It’s not South Beach, but LSU has become the new millennium’s version of what we saw from the University of Miami (Fla.) in the 1980s and 1990s. The new “U” is in Baton Rouge.

NFL analyst Mike Detillier lives in Raceland.

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